2 The Welfare State and Anti-Poverty Policy in Rich Countries Ive Marx a, Brian Nolan b and Javier Olivera c Working Paper No. 14 / 03 April 2014 ABSTRACT This paper is prepared as a chapter for the Handbook of Income Distribution, Volume 2 (edited by A. B. Atkinson and F. Bourguignon, Elsevier-North Holland, forthcoming). Like the other chapters in the volume (and its predecessor), the aim is to provide a comprehensive review of a particular area of research. The aim of this chapter is to highlight some key aspects of recent economic research on the welfare state and anti-poverty policy in rich countries, and explore their implications. We begin with the conceptualisation and measurement of poverty, before sketching out some core features and approaches to the welfare state and anti-poverty policies. We then focus on the central plank of the modern welfare state s efforts to address poverty, namely social protection, discussing in turn the inactive working-age population, child income support, in-work poverty, and retirement and old-age pensions. After that we discuss social spending on other than cash transfers: the labour market, education, training and activation, and finally intergenerational transmission, childhood and neighbourhoods. We also discuss the welfare state and anti-poverty policy in the context of the economic crisis which began in , and the implications for strategies aimed at combining economic growth and employment with making serious inroads into poverty. We conclude with highlighting directions for future research. JEL Classification: I3, I38, D63 Keywords: poverty, anti-poverty policy, redistribution Corresponding author: Ive Marx University of Antwerp and IZA S.M. 181 St Jacobstraat 2, 2000 Antwerp, Belgium a b c Herman Deleeck Centre for Social Policy, University of Antwerp, Sint-Jacobstraat 2, 2000 Antwerp, Belgium; Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn, Germany College of Human Sciences, UCD, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland University of Luxembourg, Route de Diekirch, L-7220, Luxembourg

3 1. Setting the Scene 1.1. Introduction Seen by some as primarily a manifestation of inequality in the distribution of income and wealth and by others as a distinctive phenomenon, poverty continues to represent a core challenge for rich countries and their welfare states. This is reflected in the very substantial body of research on poverty in industrialised countries, both country-specific and comparative, which seeks to capture the extent of poverty and how it is changing over time, understand its nature, and assess the effectiveness of policies and strategies aimed at addressing it. Poverty is widely regarded as a key social concern in most rich countries, not only in terms of the quality of life of those affected but also their wasted potential, as well as the risks to the social fabric and social cohesion more generally. (Chapter 24 by Martin Ravallion argues that the notion that poverty not only should but can be eliminated in such countries is a relatively recent development, and also discusses in depth the links between poverty and macroeconomic performance). While the nature of poverty and how best to tackle it remain hotly contested at a political and ideological level, the focus of research has increasingly been on the effectiveness or otherwise of antipoverty policies and strategies, which the recent economic crisis has served only to reinforce. The aim of this chapter is to highlight some key aspects of recent economic research on the welfare state and anti-poverty policy in rich countries, and explore their implications. A core theme will be that the way poverty is conceptualised and measured has fundamental implications for how anti-poverty policy is thought about, designed and implemented. We therefore begin Section 1 with conceptualisation and measurement and key patterns and trends (on which see also Jäntti and Danziger, 2000), before sketching out some core features and approaches to the welfare state and anti-poverty policies. Section 2 then focuses on the central plank of the modern welfare state s efforts to address poverty, namely social protection, discussing in turn the inactive working-age population, child income support, in-work poverty, and retirement and old-age pensions. Section 3 looks beyond social protection to discuss social spending on other than cash transfers, the labour market, education, training and activation, and finally intergenerational transmission, childhood and neighbourhoods. Section 4 discusses the welfare state and anti-poverty policy in the context of the economic crisis which began in , and the implications for strategies aimed at combining economic growth and employment with making serious inroads into poverty. Finally, Section 5 highlights directions for future research. THE WELFARE STATE AND ANTI-POVERTY POLICY IN RICH COUNTRIES 3

4 1.2. Conceptualising and Measuring Poverty The definition of poverty underpinning most recent research in Europe relates to exclusion from the ordinary life of the society due to lack of resources, as spelt out for example in the particularly influential formulation by Townsend (1979). This has also been very influential from a policy-making perspective, as evidenced by the definition adopted by the European Economic Communities in the mid-1980s: The poor shall be taken to mean persons, families and groups of persons whose resources (material, cultural and social) are so limited as to exclude them from the minimum acceptable way of life in the Member State in which they live. Poverty from this starting-point has two core elements: it is about inability to participate, and this inability to participate is attributable to inadequate resources. Most economic research then employs income to distinguish the poor, with a great deal of research and debate on how best to establish an income cut-off for that purpose. There are also substantial theoretical and empirical literatures on concepts such as social exclusion (see for example Kronauer, 1998) and on the capabilities approach pioneered by Sen (see for example 1980, 1993), which have implications for how one thinks about and measures poverty. Indeed, a concern with poverty per se may be seen as predominantly an Anglo-Saxon concern, with concepts such as deprivation and social exclusion more often the focus in countries such as France or Germany and with the level of living approach to living standards and wellbeing of central importance in the Nordic countries (and having much in common with Sen s capabilities approach in general orientation, on which see for example Erikson, 1993). In comparative analysis, the most common approach to deriving income thresholds has been to calculate them as proportions of median income in the country in question, with 50% or 60% of the median the most widely used. The underlying rationale is that those falling more than a certain distance below the average or normal income in their society are unlikely to be able to participate fully in it, and notable examples from a very large literature adopting this approach are Atkinson, Rainwater and Smeeding (1995) and the OECD s recent studies Growing Unequal? (2008) and Divided We Stand (2011). Such research, like that on income inequality, was for many years bedevilled by differences in definition and measures in the data available for different countries, but sources such as the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) micro-database, the figures produced by Eurostat from micro-data for the EU countries, and the database of aggregate poverty (and inequality) estimates assembled by the OECD have greatly improved this situation. Differences across countries and trends over time in relative income poverty measured in this fashion have played a central role in European research and policy debate, and Chapter 4 CSB WORKING PAPER NO. 14 / 03

5 9 in the present volume by Morelli, Smeeding and Thompson presents evidence on trends in such measures to which we will return below. 1 This approach to deriving income thresholds can be contrasted with the USA, where the existence of a long-standing official poverty line has fundamentally influenced how poverty is debated and research carried out. That standard goes back to the 1960s, when it was originally based on the cost of a nutritionally adequate diet, multiplied by a factor to take account of non-food spending, but its key feature is that it has subsequently been up-rated in line with consumer prices, rather than linked to average income or living standards. To characterise this contrast as between relative versus absolute notions of poverty would be to oversimplify, since above subsistence level notions of what constitutes poverty inevitably reflect prevailing norms and expectations. The key issue in making comparisons over time is whether the poverty standard is fixed in terms of purchasing power anchored at a point in time - or increases as average living standards rise. As Lampman (1971) put it in a US context, in fighting a War on Poverty one may want to monitor how well one is doing in meeting a fixed target rather than redefining the target as income changes. However, over any prolonged period where average living standards are rising, this may lose touch with the everyday understanding of poverty in the society. Thus an influential expert panel reviewing the US official measure saw poverty in terms of insufficient resources for basic living needs, defined appropriately for the United States today (Citro and Michael, 1995). The fact that the anchored measure has continued to be seen as relevant in the USA for all its well-recognized and analysed technical limitations is in itself thus a reflection of the fact that growth in median real incomes has been modest there. In Europe, the set of poverty and social inclusion indicators adopted by the EU since 2001 have supplemented purely relative income poverty thresholds with ones anchored at a point in time some years earlier and up-rated in line with prices. The onset of economic crisis from , when median income and thus relative income thresholds actually fell in some countries, proved a salutary reminder of the value of such anchored thresholds. Similar arguments apply in making comparisons across countries at rather different levels of average income: neither purely country-specific relative measures nor common thresholds tell the whole story with respect to poverty. In a European context this was brought to the fore by the accession to the EU in 1 Many different ways of establishing such a threshold have been proposed, for example by reference to what it costs to buy a specified basket of goods and services, to ordinary expenditure patterns, to standards implicit in social security support rates, or to views in the population about for example the income needed to get by. THE WELFARE STATE AND ANTI-POVERTY POLICY IN RICH COUNTRIES 5

6 2004 and 2007 of new eastern countries with much lower levels of average income than the old member states. Alternative ways of establishing an income poverty threshold in a rich country have been proposed, for example by reference to what it costs to buy a specified basket of goods and services, to ordinary expenditure patterns, to standards implicit in social security support rates, or to views in the population about for example the income needed to get by. This continues to represent a significant theme in poverty research literature, as shown by recent attempts to apply the basket of goods approach in a consistent fashion across a variety of European countries (for a discussion of strengths and limitations of these alternatives see Nolan and Whelan, 1996). However, the extent to which this research has impacted on policy formulation and debate remains quite limited, with the relative and anchored income lines dominating, one suspects not least because of their reasonably straightforward empirical derivation. In a similar vein, the way household size and composition are taken into account in applying those income lines is for the most part rather straightforward. The household is conventionally taken as the income recipient unit, as in the study of income inequality more broadly, assuming that income is shared so members reach a common standard of living. The fact that the types of household identified as poor (much more than the overall poverty rate) can be highly sensitive to the precise equivalence scale employed has been known for some time (see for example Buhmann et al., 1987, Coulter, Cowell and Jenkins, 1992), but in the absence of a more satisfactory alternative emerging from research practice is to rely on several commonly-used scales (the square root of household size, the OECD scale, and the modified OECD scale) and (at best) present result with more than one so that this sensitivity can be assessed. While a number of studies have sought to open up the household black box from a poverty perspective a sub-set of the research on intra-household inequality more broadly discussed in Chapter 17 of the present volume by Chiappori and Meghir this has had little impact on practice in empirical analysis and policy formulation. The same could be said of the extensive literature on how best to capture the extent of poverty in a single summary indicator, where despite the considerable literature developing sophisticated indicators the most commonly-used measure remains the simple headcount. Amartya Sen highlighted as long ago as the mid-1970s how this faces the policy-maker with the perverse incentive to target the least poor, and his (1976) and alternative ways of incorporating the poverty gap and inequality among the poor have been debated, often derived from a set of axioms representing a priori notions of the properties such a measure should have. The Foster, Greer and Thorbecke (1984) class of poverty measures, for example, are additively decomposable and, additionally, allow for different judgements regarding the importance attached to the extent on 6 CSB WORKING PAPER NO. 14 / 03

7 inequality among the poor. Such poverty measures that capture poverty intensity also suffer from greater sensitivity to measurement error, though, especially the presence of extreme low incomes which often reflects mis-reporting, 2 and as Myles (2000) argues their mathematical representation may have made their meaning obscure to potential users. The robustness of poverty orderings has also been a long-standing concern in the literature (Atkinson, 1987; Zheng, 2000), and dominance approaches developed for income inequality comparisons have been the adapted for use in the poverty context (for a recent example see Duclos and Makdissi (2005), but once again this has not entered mainstream empirical practice, where the comparison of poverty headcounts over time or across countries on the basis of one or at most a very limited set of thresholds and equivalence scales remains the norm. An awareness of the importance of measurement error and the need to take statistical confidence intervals seriously in such comparisons does appear to be increasing, however (see for example Goedeme, 2013). There have also been significant improvements in the quality and comparability of income data for poverty analysis in recent years (as is the case for the analysis of income inequality more generally, as brought out in Morelli, Smeeding and Thompson s chapter 9 and in Toth, 2014), not least due to the efforts of organisations such as the OECD, the Luxembourg Income Study, and Eurostat as well as national statistics offices. A substantial strand in recent research on poverty which is increasingly influencing practice has focused instead on questioning what economic research had tended to take for granted: that current income is the most satisfactory, or least bad, yardstick available for identifying the poor. It has instead been argued forcefully that low income fails in practice to distinguish those experiencing poverty and exclusion, because current income does not capture the impact of savings, debt, previous spending on consumer durables, owner-occupied housing, goods and services provided by the State, work-related expenses such as transport and childcare, and geographical variation in prices, because needs also differ in ways missed by conventional equivalence scales (for example in relation to disability), and because income from self-employment, home production and capital are particularly difficult to measure accurately. One response is to measure financial poverty in terms of consumption rather than income, on the basis that the transitory component is a great deal smaller, but expenditure as measured in household budget surveys often covers only a short period and is not the same as consumption, while low expenditure may be associated with saving and does not necessarily capture constrained resources. Other avenues explored in research have been to impute income from durables, owner-occupied housing and non-cash 2 The poverty gap measure advanced by Hills (2002), based on the distance between the threshold and the median income of the poor, is one response to that problem. THE WELFARE STATE AND ANTI-POVERTY POLICY IN RICH COUNTRIES 7

8 benefits, to broaden the needs incorporated into equivalence scales, and to combine survey and other data to improve the measurement of income. The exploitation of longitudinal data has also been a significant contributor to income-based poverty research. Poverty measures are often based on the income of the household in a specific week, month or year, but (even if measured accurately) income at a particular point in time may not be representative of the usual or longer-term income of the household. Longitudinal data tracking households and their incomes have now become much more widely available, allowing those who move in and out of low income to be distinguished from those who are persistently on low income, and a dynamic perspective on income now plays a central role in research on poverty. Bane and Ellwood (1986) pioneered research on the length of spells in poverty in the USA, and cross-country analysis was pioneered by Duncan et al. (1993). Comparative studies of income poverty dynamics since then include OECD (2001), Whelan et al. (2003), Fouarge and Layte (2005) and Valletta (2006). Movements in and out of poverty are special cases of more general income mobility, discussed in Chapter 11 by Jäntti and Jenkins in this volume. Available studies show what the OECD (2001) has summarised as the seeming paradox that poverty is simultaneously fluid and characterised by long-term traps. Many spells in poverty are short and represent only transitory set-backs, and considerably fewer people are continually poor for an extended period of time than are observed in poverty at a point in time, but on the other hand the typical year spent in poverty is lived by someone who experiences multiple years of poverty; comparison across countries has found poverty persistence to be particularly high in the USA and much lower in countries with lower cross-sectional poverty rates. The EU s social inclusion indicators now include a measure of persistent poverty, the percentage below the relative poverty threshold in the current year and at least two of the previous three. More generally, this aspect of poverty research, with its emphasis on trying to understand not only once-off poverty entries and escapes but also the cumulative experience of poverty over years, has had a major impact on the way policy effectiveness is thought about and assessed. As well as broadening the measurement of income/financial resources and their dynamics, a parallel development in recent poverty research has sought to go beyond income, with a view to: identifying the poor more accurately and understanding the causal processes at work, capturing the multidimensional nature of poverty, and/or encompassing social exclusion conceived as something broader than financial poverty. Non-monetary indicators of deprivation have been used for quite some time to directly capture different aspects of living standards and social exclusion (either on their own or combined with low income), to validate an income poverty threshold, and/or to bring out graphically what it 8 CSB WORKING PAPER NO. 14 / 03

9 means to be poor; the review of the literature on measures of material deprivation in OECD countries by Boarini and Mira d Ercole, (2006) listed over a hundred studies. Over the past decade or more, non-monetary indicators measured at micro-level are also increasingly being used in order to capture the multidimensional nature of poverty and of social exclusion more broadly especially in Europe, where the concepts of social exclusion and social inclusion have come to be widely used alongside poverty in research and policy circles, unlike the USA where they have so far had little purchase. Comparative analysis of datasets such as the European Community Household Panel Survey (ECHP) organised by Eurostat and carried out in most of the (then) EU member states from the mid-1990s to 2001, and the EU-Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) data-gathering framework which replaced it, has identified distinct dimensions of disadvantage (see for example Whelan et al. 2001; Eurostat, 2005; Guio and Macquet, 2007; Guio, 2009; Nolan and Whelan, 2010, 2011), bringing out that low income alone is not enough to predict who experiences poor housing, neighbourhood deprivation, poor health and access to health services, and low education. The measurement of multi-dimensional poverty and inequality, discussed in Chapter 4 of this volume by Aaberge and Brandolini, raises complex issues not only about the best way to identify and empirically capture particular dimensions, but also how information about different aspects of deprivation or exclusion is best summarised across those dimensions (on which see Tsui, 2002; Bourguignon and Chakravarty, 2002; Atkinson, 2003; Aaberge and Peluso, 2012). The focus on multidimensionality has gone well beyond a purely academic concern to also influence the way poverty reduction targets have been framed, both nationally and at EU level. The national poverty reduction target adopted in Ireland in the 1990s, for example, was framed in terms of the combination of low income and basic deprivation, and lively debates about how best to frame targets for child poverty in the UK have centred on the role of multidimensionality. Since 2001 the EU s Social Inclusion process has at its core a set of indicators designed to monitor progress and support mutual learning that is explicitly and designedly multidimensional, including but going beyond income-based poverty indicators, including indicators of material deprivation and housing deprivation (see Atkinson et al., 2002; Marlier et al., 2007; Nolan and Whelan, 2011) Chapter 3). Even more strikingly, when in 2010 the EU adopted the Europe 2020 strategy for jobs and growth, which for the first time included poverty reduction among its high-level targets, the target population for poverty reduction was identified as those: below the 60% of national median threshold relative income threshold, and/or; above the material deprivation threshold, and/or; in a jobless household. A total of 23% of EU citizens were identified as at risk of poverty and social exclusion, as this was labelled, significantly more than the 16% THE WELFARE STATE AND ANTI-POVERTY POLICY IN RICH COUNTRIES 9

10 below the headline 60% of median relative income threshold, and EU leaders pledged to bring at least 20 million of these people out of poverty and exclusion by While once can readily criticise the logic and implications of this precise combination of elements (on which see Nolan and Whelan, 2011, 2012), it represents a powerful illustration of the role which multidimensional measures, and direct measures of material deprivation as a central component, have come to play in framing European anti-poverty policy. The European poverty target evolved from a process of development and adoption of social inclusion indicators at EU level over the previous decade (see for example Atkinson et al, 2002), which has had a significant influence on data and analyses of poverty and anti-poverty policy in Europe, and indeed on the way poverty is thought about and research framed. This serves as an important example of the broader point that a good deal of research on poverty is carried out or sponsored by bodies national or international that have an interest in demonstrating that particular sets of policies or orientations towards anti-poverty strategy are or are likely to be successful. In a more subtle way, their perspectives will influence the data and indicators available to researchers and thus the analyses that can be readily undertaken. There have been enormous advances in the availability of accessible microdata in recent years, which has fundamentally influenced poverty research and helped to democratise it, but the influence of national governments and international organisations remains substantial. Finally, in discussing how poverty research is approached differences in disciplinary perspectives are also important. For example, researchers from an economics perspective are generally more comfortable with financial indicators of living standards and exclusion, and highlight the role of economic incentives in understanding and tackling poverty, whereas sociologists have often been more open to employing non-monetary measures, and highlight the role of social stratification and social context. Having said that, there has been significant blurring of disciplinary boundaries and poverty research has become a site for particularly fruitful collaborations between inter alia economists, sociologists, social policy analysts, geographers, anthropologists, educationalists, epidemiologists, psychologists, and indeed geneticists and neuroscientists, of which this review chapter can only give a flavour, concentrating for the most part on the economics literature Key Patterns and Trends As the previous section has highlighted, the most common practice in comparative research on poverty remains the application of relative income poverty thresholds and comparisons of headcounts of the proportions falling below those thresholds in different countries. On that 10 CSB WORKING PAPER NO. 14 / 03

11 basis poverty rates for various OECD countries based on the data in the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) have been compared in for example Atkinson, Rainwater and Smeeding (1995), Fritzell and Ritakallio (2004), the OECD has assembled estimates for many of its member countries at intervals from 1980 which have underpinned its important studies in this area (notably OECD 2008, 2011), and annual estimates are also now produced by Eurostat for all the member states of the EU. This, together with national data, provides a substantially improved evidence base for the study of poverty across countries and over time. Chapter 9 in this volume by Morelli, Smeeding and Thompson summarises broad trends in relative income poverty over time, with figures from the LIS suggesting that from the mid-1980s to mid-2000s relative income rates generally rose or stayed stable, with very few examples of significant falls. The OECD s analysis of the estimates of relative income poverty it assembled, as examined in Burniaux et al. (1998), Forster and Pearson (2002), Förster and d Ercole (2005), Growing Unequal? (2008) and Divided We Stand (2011), highlighted that the most common direction of change in those figures was upwards. The corresponding data produced by Eurostat covers only (most of) the countries in the EU-15 for the period from the mid-1990s to 2001, based on the ECHP, while the expansion of the Union to 27 member states was accompanied by the development of a new statistical apparatus underpinning these estimates, EU-SILC, from about 2004; this means that trends before 2004 can be assessed only for the old member states and, for many of these, with a break in the series in the early 2000s which affects comparability. None the less, the feature displayed by these figures highlighted by a number of studies is the disappointing progress in bringing relative income poverty rates down despite strong growth in employment in some countries over the decade to the mid-2000s (see for example Cantillon, 2011). It is important to note however that there is considerable variability in country experiences and that the stability in the overall poverty rate can mask major underlying shifts for different groups. The OECD s studies, for example, show that the trend in relative income poverty for working age people in the second half of the 1990s and into the 2000s was generally upwards, often reflecting a decline in the poverty-reducing impact of taxes and transfers, but pensioners saw sizeable declines in many countries. So policies operating with respect to one important target group such as older persons could be having substantial success in reducing poverty while that is obscured by the impact of changes for other groups. In a similar vein, child poverty the focus of particular attention from policymakers in recent years may not necessarily move in the same direction as the overall poverty rate, with the UK providing an example where trends in child versus overall poverty have deviated substantially over the past two decades. THE WELFARE STATE AND ANTI-POVERTY POLICY IN RICH COUNTRIES 11

12 The OECD has also usefully documented trends in overall poverty taking a threshold anchored at 50% of the median in the mid-1980s and then indexed to price changes. On this measure, all OECD countries achieved significant reductions in absolute poverty up to In countries like Ireland and Spain, which experienced very rapid income growth, poverty in 1995 measured this way was one-sixth the level of 10 years earlier. The US poverty rate on this basis shows a decline from the mid-1980s up until 2000, though smaller than the average decline of the 15 OECD countries included in the study (Förster and d Ercole, 2005). In a similar vein, it is striking that some countries where relative income poverty remained quite stable or even rose have seen very marked falls in levels of material deprivation, notably some of the lower-income countries joining the EU from 2004 as the common indicators of material deprivation now also produced by Eurostat serve to demonstrate. The evolution of alternative measures of poverty since the onset of the economic crisis across the OECD from is also of central relevance, as we discuss in detail in the final Section of this chapter. National studies for various countries also shed light on poverty trends and the factors at work, though given differences in methods and approaches it is more difficult to generalise from them. In the USA, for example, most analyses of long-term poverty trends focus on the official poverty rate, which is not linked to average or median income (see for example Page and Stevens, 2006; Meyer and Wallace, 2009; Smeeding and Thompson, 2013). This (and variants of it) was higher in the 1980s than the 1970s but despite subsequent falls was still as high in the mid- 2000s as it had been in the mid-1970s. Stagnant median wage growth, rising inequality and the evolution of unemployment have been highlighted in studies, with the changing wage distribution assigned a central role in explaining poverty trends. Studies of poverty trends in the UK, by contrast, have generally focused on relative income poverty and have highlighted the role of changes in the transfer and direct tax systems in the increase recorded in the 1980s and into the 19990s and then stabilisation from the late 1990s. However, as Dickens and Ellwood (2003) emphasise in a comparative study of Britain and the United States, the factors influencing poverty trends can differ substantially between absolute and relative measures as well as countries and it is hazardous to generalise. Trends in poverty over time, overall and for specific sub-groups, offer one important window into the causal factors involved and into what works in addressing poverty, especially in terms of the impact of changes made in social protection and tax systems. It is also striking, though, that the ranking of countries in terms of relative income poverty rates tends to be fairly stable over time. Table 1 shows the percentage of persons in households falling below 50% and 60% of median (equivalised) disposable household income in 25 OECD countries around the mid-2000s. The simple fact that there is very considerable cross-country variation in 12 CSB WORKING PAPER NO. 14 / 03

13 poverty measured this way with some countries displaying percentages below 60% of the median as low as 11-12% and at the other extreme countries having figures twice that high and that the ranking of countries tends to be reasonable stable over time suggests that there are important structural factors at work from which anti-poverty strategies have much to learn. Table 1. Income Poverty Rates in OECD Countries, Mid-2000s Country % below 50% of median income % below 60% of median income Australia (2003) Austria (2004) Belgium (2000) Canada (2007) Czech Rep (2004) Denmark (2004) Estonia (2004) Finland (2004) France (2005) Germany (2007) Greece (2004) Hungary (2005) Ireland (2004) Italy (2008) Luxembourg (2004) Mexico (2004) Netherlands (2004) Norway (2004) Poland (2004) Slovenia (2004) Spain (2007) Sweden (2005) Switzerland (2004) UK (2004) USA (2007) Source: LIS, downloaded A similar point is brought home by reference to the variation across countries in relative income poverty rates for specific population subgroups. Table 2 illustrates this with the rates for children and older persons falling below 50% of national median income, compared with the population as a whole. Children have above-average rates in about half the countries shown, with the gap being particularly wide in the UK and the USA, but in a substantial minority their rate is below average. The elderly have an above-average rate in most countries, with substantial variation in the size of the gap, and there are some where their rate is well below the average. A similar comparison across the EU 27 using data from EU-SILC shows similar patterns. So this reinforces the notion that THE WELFARE STATE AND ANTI-POVERTY POLICY IN RICH COUNTRIES 13

14 there is much to be learned in policy terms from analysis of the situation and treatment of similar groups in different countries. Table 2. Income Poverty Rates for Children and Elderly in OECD Countries, Mid-2000s Country % of below 50% of median income Children Elderly (65+) All Australia (2003) Austria (2004) Belgium (2000) Canada (2007) Czech Rep (2004) Denmark (2004) Estonia (2004) Finland (2004) France (2005) Germany (2007) Greece (2004) Hungary (2005) Ireland (2004) Italy (2008) Luxembourg (2004) Mexico (2004) Netherlands (2004) Norway (2004) Poland (2004) Slovenia (2004) Spain (2007) Sweden (2005) Switzerland (2004) UK (2004) USA (2004) Source: LIS downloaded The same is true of other groups which are generally thought of as vulnerable. For example, the unemployed face a significantly heightened risk of relative income poverty virtually everywhere, but the gap between them and the employed varies widely across countries. Similarly, lone parents often face much higher risks of poverty than couples with one or two children, but that gap varies a great deal. As OECD (2005) points out, in many countries it is not living a single-parent households per se that increases risk, but rather the likelihood that parent is not in work. As we shall see, this type of comparative analysis plays a central role in research aimed at informing anti-poverty policies and strategies. It is also worth noting that although relative income poverty measures are sometimes dismissed as really only capturing inequality, in fact a country (or group within it) can have zero poverty despite substantial inequality. To give concrete examples, in both the Netherlands and New Zealand the 14 CSB WORKING PAPER NO. 14 / 03

15 Poverty rate after taxes and transfers, Poverty line 60% (total population) incidence of relative poverty among the elderly (with the 50 per cent of median threshold) is close to zero, although there is very substantial income inequality among their elderly populations. The redistributive effort required to truncate the distribution at a widely used poverty threshold like 50 per cent of median equivalent income is in fact a fraction of the actual redistributive flows that take place in most countries. In practice, as Figure 1 shows, broadly speaking where inequality in disposable income is high then relative income poverty rates tend to be high as well, but similar inequality levels can be associated with quite different levels of relative income poverty. Figure 1. Gini Coefficient for Disposable Income and Relative Income Poverty (60% median), 2009, OECD Israel Turkey Korea Greece Spain Japan Estonia Canada Italy New Poland Portugal Belgium Luxembou Sweden Denmark Finland Hungary Germany Switzerlan Zealand UK Ireland Slovenia Slovak Netherlan Norway Austria France rg d Republic Iceland ds Czech R Chile Gini (at disposable income, post taxes and transfers) Source: OECD income distribution database The Welfare State and Poverty As Barr (2001) puts it, the welfare state combines the role of piggy bank and Robin Hood, providing collective insurance against social risks while also aiming to ameliorate need and poverty. Redistribution can be horizontal, across the life cycle, or vertical between higher and lower THE WELFARE STATE AND ANTI-POVERTY POLICY IN RICH COUNTRIES 15

16 incomes. Poverty reduction is by no means the sole criterion against which the success of Welfare State institutions would or should be judged whether at a point in time or over the life-cycle but it would be widely accepted as among the core aims. Research aimed at assessing success or failure in those terms can focus at the aggregate level, at specific population sub-groups, or at particular institutional structures, interventions or innovations, and can be for a particular country or from a comparative perspective. The nature of that research is also multi-faceted. At one end of the spectrum one can locate studies of the effectiveness of very particular aspects of institutional structures or changes in those structures on the target population to whom they are directed. Such evaluation studies employ a wide variety of analytical and technical approaches, which have been the subject of intensive development in the economics literature in recent years. While the outcome studied is occasionally whether people are lifted out of poverty, there is a much more extensive literature focusing on effectiveness in getting unemployed persons into employment, improving performance in school, keeping people out of jail or improving their health, all of which may be expected to impact on poverty status. While randomized controlled trials are recently in vogue in this context - though the negative income tax experiments conducted in the USA and Canada in the 1970s provide early large-scale examples 3 - more commonly assessments are not based on such an approach. The methods employed include reduced form or limited information models (including least squares, matching methods including propensity score matching, instrumental variable analysis or the closely related regression discontinuity design approach, and difference in difference estimation) versus the estimation of structural models/parameters. 4 Such methods are discussed extensively in other Handbooks in this series (notably those focused on labour economics, since assessing the impact of labour market programmes has been a particularly fertile field of application); purely from the point of view of research on poverty, though, while influencing specific national reform efforts they have had much less impact on the way anti-poverty policy is thought about more broadly. In that respect, comparative analysis of poverty outcomes and redistributive effort across countries over time continues to dominate. This is underpinned by the fact that the direct effect of transfers and direct taxes on measured poverty is seen to differ very substantially across countries. OECD analysis concludes that the best-performing countries 3 4 See for example Levine et al. (2005). For discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of alternative approaches see Chetty (2009), Deaton (2010), Heckman and Urzua (2010), Imbens (2010) and Heckman (2010). 16 CSB WORKING PAPER NO. 14 / 03

17 succeed in lifting about two-thirds of their pre-tax/transfer poor above the threshold, while others only manage to move one-quarter above. Recent EU statistics tell a similar story, as Table 3 illustrates: welfare systems reduce the risk of poverty by 38% on average across the EU, but this impact varies from under 15% to over 60% across the member states. Some countries achieve better efficiency (i.e. reduce poverty more for each euro or dollar spent) through targeting low-income groups, and the role of means-testing is one of the most hotly-debated aspects of antipoverty policy, to which we return below. However, the prior point to be made here is that the pattern of incomes from the market, taken as the baseline for comparison, will itself be very much influenced by social transfers, and indeed by welfare state institutions more broadly. The existence of social transfers allows substantial numbers of households to have no income from the market, which would not be sustainable otherwise, and the welfare state also affects incentives to work and save in many other ways: the no welfare state counter-factual is not known. A favoured mode of analysis in comparative studies is to take a set of countries at a point in time or pooling cross-sections over time and assess the relationship between poverty outcomes and a wide set of independent variables reflecting population structures, welfare spending levels and aspects of labour market and welfare state institutions. (These parallel, and sometimes overlap, similar studies employing income inequality as dependent variable reviewed in depth in Chapter 20 of the current volume by Forster and Tóth). Particularly influential studies in this vein include Korpi and Palme (1998), Moller et al (2003), Kenworthy (2011). In such comparative analysis countries may be taken as individual units of observation, or they may be grouped together into different welfare regimes, designed to capture key commonalities/differences in welfare state institutions. Esping-Andersen s (1990) distinction of three distinct regimes has been highly influential: the liberal/anglo-saxon countries with minimal public intervention and a preference for targeting and reliance on the market, the social democratic/nordic countries with comprehensive social entitlements, and the Continental welfare states with conservative origins built around social insurance but often along narrowly defined occupational distinctions and a significant degree of reliance on the family (see also Esping-Andersen, 1999, 2009). A fourth Southern regime is also generally distinguished (Ferrera, 1996), and the treatment of the formerly communist countries of eastern Europe is also a matter for debate - the relationship between aggregate social spending and poverty levels looks systematically different for the countries which joined the EU in 2004 versus the old 15 members (see for example Tsakloglou and Papadopoulos, 2002), but treating them as a single regime may not be satisfactory. Many empirical studies have brought out the extent to which conventional indicators of (relative income) poverty vary systematically across welfare regimes (for a recent example see Whelan and Maitre, 2010), and highlight the consistently low rates found in Nordic countries compared with the generally high (though varying) THE WELFARE STATE AND ANTI-POVERTY POLICY IN RICH COUNTRIES 17

18 ones seen in the liberal and southern European countries. Looking in some detail at the make-up of household income by source, Maitre, Nolan and Whelan (2010) show that countries in the anglo-saxon/liberal regime were distinctive in the extent to which low-income households were dependent on social transfers, and also in the extent to which that dependence served as a predictor of material deprivation. The social democratic and corporatist regimes were characterised by a more modest degree of welfare dependence among low-income households, while in the Southern Mediterranean countries welfare was not strongly associated with low income and was a particularly poor predictor of deprivation. Table 3. Income Poverty Rates Pre- and Post-Transfers in EU Countries, 2007 Country Pre-transfer Post-transfer Reduction in poverty poverty poverty % % % point % Belgium Bulgaria Czech Rep Denmark Germany Estonia Ireland Greece Spain France Italy Cyprus Latvia Lithuania Luxembourg Hungary Malta Netherlands Austria Poland Portugal Romania Slovenia Slovakia Finland Sweden UK Eurostat downloaded. Aggregate-level comparative analysis of this type suggests that while transfer and tax systems are undoubtedly key in underpinning variations in poverty levels, other institutional features also contribute in the best performers, notably high levels of minimum wage protection and strong collective bargaining compressing wages, more extensive public and subsidized employment as well active labour market programmes, higher levels of public spending on education etc (see also Chapter 20 in this Handbook). Disentangling the effect of these various factors is inherently fraught with difficulties, and that is where simulation via tax-benefit models, discussed in detail in Chapter 26 of this volume by Figari, Paulus 18 CSB WORKING PAPER NO. 14 / 03

19 and Sutherland may be particularly helpful. The Euromod research programme in particular has enabled comparative tax-benefit simulation analysis across the EU (Immervoll et al., 2006, Figari and Sutherland, 2013) with major implications for policy. To take just one example, Cantillon et al. (2003) showed that simply increasing spending on transfers would have a limited impact on poverty in some EU countries because much of it would go to those already above the poverty line, particularly in the Southern European welfare states where pensions dominate. Another central strand of comparative poverty research has focused on analysis of the characteristics associated with being in poverty and the underlying processes involved, employing micro-data. This has been the subject of a very wide variety of studies covering many countries, both descriptive and econometric. Broadly speaking, the types of individual or household seen as at particular risk of poverty include those with low levels of education and skills, the low paid, the unemployed, people with disabilities, lone parents, large families, the elderly, children, ethnic minorities, migrants, and refugees. However, there is substantial variation across countries in the patterning of risk, with major implications for how the underlying processes are understood and for policy. The extent to which individual characteristics, qualifications or experiences manifest themselves in high poverty rates is clearly seen to depend on the household, labour market and institutional settings in which those disadvantages are experienced. To take one example, the poverty risk for the unemployed compared with others is seen to depend on whether they have dependants, whether there are others in the household at work, and how the welfare state and its institutions try to cushion the impact of unemployment, most importantly through social protection. Strikingly, a high employment rate is clearly not a sufficient condition for low poverty among the working aged population, which as we discuss below is of central relevance when boosting labour market participation is at the heart of anti-poverty policy in many countries. Finally, the availability of longitudinal data has also allowed the development of econometric modelling of poverty dynamics, which seeks to link observed movements into or out of poverty over time to changes in the earnings, labour force participation and composition of the household; Duncan et al. (1993) was the first to do so in a comparative setting. A distinction is often made in such dynamic analyses between income events, such as changes in earnings or benefits, and demographic events such as the arrival of a new child, partnership formation, death, marital dissolution, or offspring leaving home. The comparative dynamic analysis by OECD (2005) suggests that changes in household structure may be less important in poverty entries and escapes in European countries than in the USA, with changes in transfers as well as earnings seen to be important in the EU and to a lesser extent in Canada, but much less so in the USA. THE WELFARE STATE AND ANTI-POVERTY POLICY IN RICH COUNTRIES 19

20 2. Social Protection and Redistribution 2.1. Introduction Cash spending as a percentage of GDP is the most widely used measure of how much effort is being made to directly redistribute income. Despite its widespread use, this measure has some well documented shortcomings. First, it ignores the need to jointly analyze benefit and tax policies. Conventional measures of (gross) social expenditure tend to overestimate the cost of welfare in Denmark, Finland and Sweden, where a substantial amount of benefit spending is clawed back through taxation. Conversely, in the Czech Republic and Slovenia, a substantial share of social spending takes the form of tax breaks for social purposes rather than cash transfers (Adema et al., 2011). Another widely acknowledged weakness of this measure is that is a very imperfect indicator of policy intent and policy design. A high level of spending may result from very generous benefits flowing to small numbers of people, and not necessarily people occupying the bottom end of the distribution, for example government elites. Yet it may also result from relatively small benefits flowing to a large number of people (De Deken and Kittel, 2007). And yet several studies have established a strong empirical relationship at country level between the overall level of social spending and various measures of inequality and inequality reduction, including (relative) poverty. This is arguably one of the more robust findings of comparative poverty research over the past decades (Atkinson, Rainwater and Smeeding, 1995; Ferrarini and Nelson, 2003; Gottschalk and Smeeding, 1997; 2000; Nolan and Marx, 2009; Pestieau, 2006; Kenworthy, 2004; 2008; 2011; Kraus, 2004; OECD, 2008; Immervoll and Richardson, 2012). Notable in these analyses was that no advanced economy achieved a low level of inequality and/or relative income poverty with a low level of social spending, regardless of how well that country performed on other dimensions that matter for poverty, notably employment. Vice versa, countries with relatively high social spending tended to have lower inequality and poverty. Here the extent of cross-country variation was always more significant, with some countries achieving more limited inequality/poverty reductions despite high social spending. There number of countries for which internationally comparative data are available has increased over recent years recently. As Figure 2 shows, there are now a number of countries (the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Slovenia, as well as Korea) that do combine fairly low levels of social expenditure with low relative poverty rates and income inequality. For the Central European countries, part of the explanation may lie in a reliance on tax breaks as social policy tools, which are not captured in gross social spending indicators. More generally, the redistributive impact of taxes is not captured here (Verbist, 2004; Verbist and Figari, 2014). 20 CSB WORKING PAPER NO. 14 / 03

21 Figure 2. Cash public social expenditure and income inequality on working age in OECD countries, 2009 Note: Gini coefficient of equivalised disposable household income among the population aged Source: OECD Divided We Stand (gini); OECD SOCX (social expenditure) This relatively strong relationship between social spending and poverty at the country level probably does not simply reflect the direct impact of transfers only: high-spending countries have other institutional features that contribute, notably high levels of minimum wage protection and strong collective bargaining compressing wages (hence limiting overall inequality), more extensive public and subsidized employment as well active labour market programmes, higher levels of public spending on education etc. Disentangling the effect of these various factors is inherently fraught with difficulties. There may in fact be mechanisms of mutual reinforcement between these factors (Beramendi, 2001). Barth and Moene (2009) argue that a more equal wage distribution leads to welfare generosity through a process of political competition. In turn, more income redistribution produces more equality. The authors hypothesize that this equality multiplier operates mainly through the bottom of the income distribution: the amplification occurs where wages near the bottom of the distribution are compressed, not where higher THE WELFARE STATE AND ANTI-POVERTY POLICY IN RICH COUNTRIES 21

22 incomes are compressed. They find empirical support in their analyses on 18 OECD countries over the years 1976 to While in theory low or moderate levels of social spending could produce low poverty rates if resources were well-targeted, the reality remains that almost no advanced economy achieves a low (relative) poverty rate, or a high level of redistribution, with a low level of social spending. Large, universal welfare systems, while on paper being least distributive, distribute in fact the most. Systems that by design strongly target resources to towards the poorest tend to be in fact less redistributive. Korpi and Palme (1998) have called this the paradox of redistribution. There is a long-standing controversy in welfare state literature over the question of whether targeting benefits towards the bottom part of the income distribution actually enhances the redistributive impact of welfare state policies, especially of social transfer policies. This issue is of far more than academic importance. In its 2011 Divided We Stand?, the OECD states that redistribution strategies based on government transfers and taxes alone would be neither effective nor financially sustainable. In this context the OECD (2011) calls for well-targeted income support policies. Organisations like the IMF and the World Bank have long advocated targeted benefits. The issue of targeting will probably gain even more poignancy in a post-crisis period marked by continued and in some cases increased budget austerity. The debate on targeting is still marked by opposed views. On the one side there are those who belief that a welfare state can only fight poverty effectively and efficiently (i.e. cost-effectively) when benefits are mainly targeted to those most in need, i.e. when benefits are selective. The 5 There is a sizeable political economy literature on this issue. McCarty and Pontusson (2009) review a number of political economy theories with regard to voter behaviour under different conditions of economic inequality. The so-called median voter models assume that changes in the income distribution lead to a shift in the preference of the median voter, or the political middle. Moene and Wallerstein (2001, 2003) argue that under conditions of rising income inequality, the median voter has a preference for reduced expenditure on insurance and social spending. Earlier Meltzer and Richard (1981) formulated an opposing hypothesis, predicting that rising income inequality leads to a shift in preferences of the median voter towards more redistribution. The evidence is quite mixed. Kenworthy and Pontusson (2005) find empirical support for the Meltzer and Richard thesis. Milanovic (2000) finds a consistent association between gross household income inequality and more tax/transfer redistribution in a set of 24 democracies in the period of the mid seventies-mid nineties. More recently Olivera (2012), performing an analysis on a pool of 33 European countries, finds that inequality increases the demand for redistribution and that increases in income inequality stimulate the demand for redistribution. Yet the empirical evidence varies and some studies arrive at opposite conclusions (Iversen and Soskice 2006, 2009; Finseraas 2009; McCarty and Pontusson 2009; Lupu and Pontusson 2011; Toth, Horn and Medgyesi 2013). 22 CSB WORKING PAPER NO. 14 / 03

23 straightforward argument here is that selective benefit systems are cheaper because fewer resources are wasted on people who are not poor. Lower public expenditures imply lower taxes, which in turn are said to be conducive to economic growth. Economic growth, the argument proceeds, benefits the poor directly (although not necessarily proportionally so) and increases at the same time the fiscal base for redistributive policies. This view of selectivity has never been commonly shared. Two sorts of arguments underpin this more critical stance. First, there are technical considerations. Van Oorschot (2002) sums up the most important dysfunctions of means-testing. First, these include higher administrative costs. Establishing need or other relevant criteria require monitoring, whereas universal benefits allow for less complex eligibility procedures. Furthermore, means tested benefits are subject to higher non-take up, partly because of stigmatization issues. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, targeted benefits can give rise to poverty traps, where benefit recipients have little incentive to take up work because this would entail loss of benefits. A second line of counter-argument is that proponents of selectivity pursue a mechanical economic argument that makes abstraction of the political processes which determine how much is actually available for redistribution. The reasoning is that, paradoxically, in countries with selective welfare systems fewer resources tend to be available for redistribution because there is less widespread and less robust political support for redistribution. As a consequence, the redistributive impact of such systems tends to be smaller. To put it differently: some degree of redistributive inefficiency (the Matthew-effect) is said to foster wider and more robust political support for redistribution, including to the most needy. This follows from the fact that a universal welfare state creates a structural coalition of interests between the least well-off and the politically more powerful middle classes (median voter theorem). By contrast, a selective system entails an inherent conflict between the least well-off, by definition the sole recipients of social transfers, and the better off, who fund the system without the prospect of getting much out of it. The juxtaposition outlined above forms the starting point for Korpi and Palme s highly influential Paradox of Redistribution, a paper in which they claim that more selective systems, paradoxically, have a smaller redistributive impact than universal systems offering both minimum income protection as well as income security and cost compensations (for children) in a broader sense. Korpi and Palme (1998) find that, in effect, this relationship is mediated by the relative size of available means for redistribution. Countries with selective redistribution systems, they argue, spend less on redistribution, at least in the public sector. In essence, selective systems are generally smaller systems. THE WELFARE STATE AND ANTI-POVERTY POLICY IN RICH COUNTRIES 23

24 The degree of redistribution is measured here by comparing the actually observed income inequality or at-risk-of-poverty rate with a rather unsophisticated counterfactual distribution (Bergh, 2005). In theory this counterfactual ought to accurately reflect the income distribution that would prevail in the absence of social transfers. However, the construction of this counterfactual is hampered by theoretical and practical problems. In most cases, including in Korpi and Palme s paper, pre-transfer income is simply calculated by deducting observed social transfers and re-adding observed taxes. Full abstraction is thus made of any behavioural effects which a change in tranfer/tax regime would entail. While patently less than perfect, the reality is that no satisfactory method exists to adequately model such behavioural effects. Many studies have pursued similar empirical approaches, for example Nelson (2004; 2007). Another critique has been formulated by Moene and Wallerstein (2003) who have argued that analyses of redistribution need to be done at a more disaggregated level than the welfare system because the determining redistributive principles may differ substantially for, say, unemployment, health care or pensions. Some schemes may rest heavily on the insurance principle, while others may put more weight to the needprinciple. Universality and selectivity can coexist within one system. Yet Moene and Wallerstein (2001) also conclude that universal provisions provoke the largest political support because of the higher chance of middle class citizens to become a beneficiary. Some opinion based studies also confirm that universal welfare schemes enjoy broader support (Kangas, 1995). Some recent studies, however, claim that the link between redistribution and universal provision has substantially weakened, or even reversed over time. Kenworthy (2011) reproduces and updates Korpi and Palme s analyses, which related to the situation in 11 countries as of Kenworthy s findings confirm that countries with more universal benefits achieve more redistribution (measured in the size of redistributive policies in the budget) for the period 1980 to By 1995, the image becomes less clear. Data for 2000 and 2005 seem to indicate that there is no longer any association (either positive or negative) between the two variables. Evidently, the findings are based on a small number of cases, which make them particularly sensitive to outliers. A trend towards more targeting in Denmark, in conjunction with an evolution towards more universal benefits in the US, is largely responsible for the shift in conclusions. Moreover, the new findings may be driven to some extent by the growing share of pensions in social spending. Kenworthy (2011:58) writes about this: This by no means settles the question, but it does suggest additional reason to rethink the notion that targeting is an impediment to effective redistribution. Figure 3, taken from Marx et al. (2013), strengthens the finding that the relationship between the extent of targeting and redistributive may have 24 CSB WORKING PAPER NO. 14 / 03

25 weakened considerably. Here targeting is captured through the concentration index. This is calculated in a similar way as the Gini coefficient. The more negative the concentration coefficient, the more targeted the transfers, whereas the closer the concentration coefficient is to the Gini, the more universal the transfers are distributed. Australia, the United Kingdom and Denmark have most negative concentration coefficients and can be characterized as strongly pro-poor. Negative concentration coefficients are found in the majority of the countries, pointing to a substantial degree of targeting. Note however that the term targeting suggests that outcomes are due to the characteristics of the system, but this need not be the case. Moreover, the outcomes of a system are highly dependent on the characteristics of the underlying population, in terms of socio-demographic characteristics, income inequality, composition of income, etc. If, for instance, a benefit is designed in such a way that all children are eligible, but all children are situated in the bottom quintile, then this policy measure may appear as targeted in its outcomes, even though its design may not include any means-testing or needs-based characteristic. This means that strictly speaking we cannot derive from the concentration coefficient how propoorness of a transfer comes about. Redistribution refers to the impact of taxes and transfers on income inequality. It is measured by the difference between the Gini coefficients with and without tax-transfers relative to pre-transfer income; this corresponds in this analysis to the difference of the Gini coefficients of market and disposable income relative to that of market income. The impact on inequality is driven by the size of transfers, as well as by their structure, i.e. whether these transfers are going relatively more to lower or higher incomes. Looking more closely at this graph, at the left hand side are Australia, the United Kingdom and Denmark, all characterized by having benefit systems that are the most strongly pro-poor of all countries. Yet the redistributive impact in Denmark appears to be much stronger. Similarly, looking at the countries with still strong pro-poor spending (concentration indices between -0.2 and 0), the corresponding redistributive impact differs a great deal. Some of the countries with the strongest redistributive tax/transfer systems are to be found here (Sweden and Finland), together with some countries with the weakest (the USA, Canada, Israel and Switzerland). On the right hand side of the graph the countries with positive targeting coefficients the relationship does become consistently negative, especially in the countries with the weakest pro-poor spending (Greece, Spain and Italy). THE WELFARE STATE AND ANTI-POVERTY POLICY IN RICH COUNTRIES 25

26 Figure 3. Concentration index (ranking by gross income) and redistributive impact, mid 2000s. Note: 1) for Belgium, France, Greece, Hungary, Slovenia and Spain calculations are based on disposable incomes instead of gross incomes due to data availability. 2) The countries included in Korpi and Palme (1998) are in bold. Source: Marx, Salanauskaite and Verbist (2013) on the basis of the Luxembourg Income Study Why does a similar degree of strong targeting, as captured by the concentration index, produce stronger redistributive outcomes in Denmark as compared to the UK and Australia? Similarly, why do similar (quasi)- universal systems yield such different redistributive outcomes across countries? This strongly suggests that design features matter. It is notable that one relationship remains fairly strong: the one between the extent of targeting and the size of the system. But there are exceptions here: a country like Denmark does combine a strong degree of targeting with a high level of social spending. The strongest redistributive impact is achieved by countries that combine moderate (Sweden and Finland) to strong targeting (Denmark) with comparatively high levels of spending. This suggests that the most redistributive systems are characterized by what is called targeting within universalism. That is to say: systems in which many people receive benefits but where the poorest get relatively more. Yet it is interesting to note that the very strong relationship between the extent of targeting and the size of the spending has weakened, as is documented by Kenworthy (2011). One of the factors that arguably made targeted systems less politically robust and prone to spending cuts in the 26 CSB WORKING PAPER NO. 14 / 03

27 1980s was the fact that strongly targeted (means-tested) benefits entailed strong work disincentives and also (perceived) family formation incentives. The last decades have seen an intensified attention to this issue. To reduce work disincentives, earnings disregards have been introduced for people who make a (partial) transition from complete benefit dependency to part-time work. Most importantly, perhaps, means-tested benefits are no longer exclusively aimed at people not in work, but also at those in work in lowpaid jobs. The French RSA (Revenu de Solidarité Active) scheme is a good example of a new style means-tested benefit scheme that offers integrated support for the non-employed and (part-time) low paid workers alike. The scheme also has entirely different work incentives. The RSA was introduced in France in 2008 the specific aim of remodelling the incentive structure social assistance beneficiaries, and particularly to make work or returning to education a more lucrative financial prospect. The previous minimum income system (Minimum Integration Income - RMI) was based on a one for one trade-off of benefit for earned income. Under RSA a 62% slope is applied. Efforts have also been made to encourage beneficiaries of RSA into employment, for example with assisted employment contracts and (improved) insertion mechanisms. In addition, the RSA has simplified the provision of social protection by combining several previously separate schemes into a single sum. A household with no earned income is eligible for the basic RSA which is defined at the household level and takes into account the composition of the household. The in-work RSA acts as a top-up for people paid less than the national minimum wage (SMIC). The point here is that targeted, means-tested systems look totally different today from the systems in place in the 1980s. Whereas the old systems were the focus of harsh welfare critiques, especially from the right, the new targeted systems are lauded as gateways of welfare to work. They enjoy broad partisan support, as is evident in the UK where the WTC, implemented by the Labour government, building on a scheme implemented under a Conservative one, is again expanded by the current Conservative one. Similarly, in France, the newly elected socialist government has no intentions for a major overhaul of the RSA, introduced by the Fillon/Sarkozy government. In the United States, the Earned Income Tax Credit a transfer program for households on low earnings has become the country s pre-eminent welfare programme (Kenworthy, 2011). The system appears to enjoys far broader and more robust political support than earlier American antipoverty programmes. The system also is less strongly targeted than earlier provisions and it caters to larger sections of the electorate, including the (lower) middle class, and this may account for that expansion. But an equally if not more important factor may well be the fact that the system is perceived to encourage and reward work. THE WELFARE STATE AND ANTI-POVERTY POLICY IN RICH COUNTRIES 27

28 2.2. Cash Transfers for the Inactive Working-age Population Much comparative poverty research that has sought to link observed variation in income inequality and poverty across countries to policy has relied on government (social) spending statistics as indicators of policy effort. As we have seen, the relationship across countries between the level of social spending as a percentage of GDP, or some related indicator, and observed inequality or poverty levels is in fact by and large a rather strong one. This is in a way surprising because the level of spending is as much reflective of the number of people receiving benefits than it is of the level and thus potential adequacy of those benefits. Likewise, measured outcomes, for example pre versus post transfer differences in inequality or poverty also depend on a host of factors that are independent or only indirectly influenced by policy: contextual and compositional factors, including labour market conditions (unemployment, employment patterns, wages), household composition (patterns of cohabitation, marriage, divorce, childbirth, ), policies which influence these dynamics (e.g. ALMPs, child care,..) If we want to understand variations in outcomes we need more sophisticated and accurate measures of policy effort and policy design than spending indicators. So-called institutional indicators aim to be directly reflective of policy intent and design. Replacement rates for various branches of social insurance are commonly applied indicators of social protection. They are intended to express the level of benefit generosity within a particular provision, for example unemployment or disability insurance. The OECD has been compiling such time series for a considerable length of time. Academic databases have been compiled by, among others, the Swedish Institute of Social Research (the SCIP database) and the University of Connecticut (Scruggs database). While such indicators are more directly reflective than spending based measures of what actually happens at policy levels they are not without their drawbacks. One is that replacement rates are generally expressed as a proportion of a reference wage. This is problematic for various reasons. With the growth of part-time and temporary employment, it has, become increasingly difficult to specify a consistent wage denominator on the basis of available data. More importantly, wages have generally not evolved in line with the standard of living (and thus the relative poverty threshold). In many countries the standard of living has increased thanks to the proliferation of dual income families rather than through real wage growth. The mere fact that benefits follow wages says little about the potential adequacy of benefits in terms of poverty relief. A second important problem is that replacement rates, e.g. within the systems of unemployment insurance or invalidity, do not capture the entitlement criteria applied, nor do they adequately express the entitlement periods. Nonetheless, there are strong indications that these are precisely the areas where policymakers have intervened the most. Unemployment 28 CSB WORKING PAPER NO. 14 / 03

29 benefit entitlement, for example, is now linked more strongly with jobsearch intensity. A third important issue is that replacement rates are based on a narrow rationale and tend to be calculated on a purely individual basis. For example, unemployment benefits may be combined with (increased) child benefit and other allowances. Additionally, of course, there may be the income of other household members, including its impact on benefit entitlement and vice versa. Also relevant in this context is the role of taxation. In most instances, the level of income protection that people actually receive in various situations is determined by a complex interaction between social security, social assistance and taxation. It is nevertheless interesting and relevant to consider trends. OECD time series on net replacement rates for the unemployed provide strong indications of reduced cash support for the unemployed between 1995 and 2005 (Immervoll and Richardson, 2011). Seven of the 10 countries recorded declining NRRs. Finland and Germany saw the biggest reductions in net replacement rates. Changes for the unemployed in most countries tended to be less damaging (or, sometimes, more beneficial) for families with children. The largest relative income drop was generally faced by long-term unemployed jobseekers who mostly rely on unemployment assistance or social assistance for income support. In the remainder of this section we will focus in somewhat more detail on institutional indicators of minimum income protection because adequate protection against severe financial poverty is arguably the first duty of the welfare state and also because poverty relief is the prime focus of this chapter. Such a focus is further desirable because the design features of tax and benefits systems, and especially the way various programmes interact in specific situations, tend to be so complex that they are not accurately and validly captured in a limited number of parameters. Minimum income protection provisions also mark the ground floor of other income maintenance provisions; minimum social insurance levels and minimum wages are almost always above the level of the social safety net. In that sense indicators of minimum income protection also tell us something about the generosity of other income maintenance provisions. We draw on the CSB Minimum Income Protection Indicators (MIPI) dataset. In this dataset net income packages are calculated using the socalled model family approach, where the income package of households in various situations (varying by household composition and income levels) in simulated, taking into account all relevant benefits for which such households are eligible and also taking into account taxes. The MIPI database is among the most comprehensive data bases available in terms of geographic and longitudinal scope, as well as in terms of the range of household situations and income components. It is worth pointing out that such institutional indicators have their limits too. They are calculated for a limited number of family types and situations. The assumption is that THE WELFARE STATE AND ANTI-POVERTY POLICY IN RICH COUNTRIES 29

30 there is full take up of benefits and that people effectively and immediately receive what they are entitled to. In the case of minimum wages the assumption is these are fully enforced. However, this is not always the case and this is one reason why the observed relationship between generosity levels as reflected in these indicators and outcomes is relatively weak. Van Mechelen and Marchal (2013) have analyzed patterns and trends in the level of minimum income protection for able bodied citizens in the European countries. The chief focus is on means-tested benefits providing minimum income protection, usually in the form of social assistance. These general means-tested benefits provide cash benefits for all or almost all people below a specified minimum income level. In some countries separate schemes exist for such groups as newly arrived migrants or the disabled. The empirical analyses use data from the CSB- Minimum Income Protection Indicators dataset (CSB-MIPI) and cover social assistance developments in 25 European countries and three US States. The study shows that the minimum income benefit packages for the able bodied in Europe have become increasingly inadequate in providing income levels sufficient to raise households above the EU atrisk-of poverty rate, defined as 60 per cent of median equivalent income in each country (Figure 4). The overall tendency for 1990s was one of almost uniform erosion of benefit levels, relative to the development of wages. This downward trend in the relative income position of families in receipt of social assistance changes somewhat in the 2000s, when the erosion of the level of benefit packages came to a halt in a number of countries. In a few countries there is even evidence of a partial reversal of the declining trend, thus somewhat strengthening the income position of able bodied persons that are in receipt of social assistance benefits. During the crisis period in particular a small number of countries have taken took extra steps to increase protection levels (Marchal, Marx and Van Mechelen, 2014). Despite a number of positive developments, net incomes of minimum income recipients continue to fall well short of the EU s at risk of poverty threshold in all but a few EU countries. The size of the gap between the level of the social safety net and the poverty threshold varies across countries and family types, but it is generally quite substantial. While the erosion of minimum income protection levels seems to have slowed the fact remains that Europe s final safety nets offer inadequate protection in all but a handful of countries. This begs the question: why are social safety nets not more adequate? Let us briefly consider two potential impediments: first, adequate social safety nets are not affordable and second, adequate social safety nets undermine the work ethic and people s willingness to work. 30 CSB WORKING PAPER NO. 14 / 03

31 Figure 4. The level of the social safety net in the EU and three US States, 2012 Note: In some countries, such as the US, Italy and Bulgaria, time limits apply, either formal or discretionary. In order to avoid additional assumptions, the levels displayed do not take these time limits into account. Source: CSB-MIPI (Van Mechelen, et al., 2011), (Eurostat, 2011; U.S. Bureau of the Census and Bureau of Labour Statistics, 2011) Are adequate social safety nets too costly? Final safety net provisions (social assistance schemes) generally constitute only a fraction of total social transfer spending (typically well below 2.5 percent of GDP in Europe, except in Ireland and the UK), the bulk of outlays going to pensions, unemployment and disability insurance, child benefits and other benefits. Vandenbroucke et al. (2013) have made tentative calculations showing that the redistributive effort required to lift all equivalent household incomes to the 60% level would be below 2.5 per cent of aggregate household income in most European countries and nowhere higher than 3.5 per cent. The countries that would have to make such a relatively great effort are all Southern and Eastern Member States. Vandenbroucke et al. (2013) also show that it is not the case that being poor in GDP per capita always implies a great redistributive effort to close the poverty gap: the Czech Republic and Hungary are relatively poor in terms of GDP per capita, but closing the poverty gap would require relatively little effort. On the other hand, Denmark and the UK have much higher living standards, yet they would have to make a relatively sizeable effort to close the poverty gap. Such a mechanical calculation ignores incentive effects and behavioural change (more poor people may prefer social assistance to low-paid jobs; the non-poor may reduce their work effort). The real cost of such an operation is probably higher than the mechanical effect and the calculation may be seen as indicating a lower boundary for the distributive effort that is required. Still, the calculation THE WELFARE STATE AND ANTI-POVERTY POLICY IN RICH COUNTRIES 31

32 also illustrates that the cost of an adequate social safety net is not necessarily outside of the realm of the conceivable. Are adequate social safety nets compatible with work incentives? Despite widespread and sometimes strongly worded concerns over the potential work disincentive effects of social safety nets empirical studies tell a more nuanced story (Immervoll, 2012). The income gap between situation of full-time dependence on minimum income benefits and a full-time job at the minimum wage (or the lowest prevailing wage) is in fact quite substantial in most European countries, especially for single persons. In some countries and under certain circumstances particular groups like lone parents with young children gain relatively little from moving into a low-paid job, especially when child care costs are accounted for. Partial transitions into work moving to a small part-time job also do not pay in certain circumstances. But generally speaking it is hard to argue that long-term dependence on social assistance benefits is an attractive financial proposition in most of Europe. The hypothetical Europe-wide introduction of social assistance minimums equal to 60% of median income would however create a financial inactivity trap in many countries, as is also brought out by the paper by Vandenbroucke et al. (2013). In countries like Bulgaria, Estonia, Slovenia and Lithuania, the net income of a single benefit recipient would be between 25% and 30% higher than the equivalent income of a single person working at minimum wage; in Spain and the Czech Republic, the relative advantage of the benefit claimant would amount to around 15 per cent. This implies if such countries would wish to move towards better final safety net provisions that then minimum income floors would have to be raised at least in step. This would require quite substantial increases in minimum wages. In 2013, twenty Member States of the European Union have a national minimum wage, set by government, often in cooperation with or on the advice of the social partners, or by the social partners themselves in a national agreement. As is illustrated in Figure 5, presenting figures for 2010, only for single persons and only in a number of countries do net income packages at minimum wage level (taking into account taxes and individual social security contributions, but also social benefits) reach or exceed the EU s at-risk-of poverty threshold, as in all graphs set at 60 per cent of median equivalent household income in each country. For lone parents and sole breadwinners with a partner and children to support, net income packages at minimum wage are below this threshold almost everywhere, usually by a wide margin. This is the case despite shifts over the past decade towards tax relief and additional income support provisions for low-paid workers (Marx, Marchal and Nolan, 2013). 32 CSB WORKING PAPER NO. 14 / 03

33 Figure 5. Gross minimum wages and net incomes at minimum wage as a percentage of the relative poverty threshold, 2012, selected EU Member States plus United States (New Jersey) Source: CSB-MIPI (Van Mechelen, et al., 2011), (Eurostat, 2011; U.S. Bureau of the Census and Bureau of Labour Statistics, 2011) When it comes to the question of whether and to what level minimum wages and hence minimum income benefits in general could be increased, opinions clearly diverge. Concerns about work disincentive effects of social safety nets are legitimate, as are concerns over potential negative employment effects of minimum wages, especially if these were to be set at levels high enough to keep households solely reliant on that wage out of poverty. The fact remains, however, that countries like Denmark or the Netherlands combine what are comparatively among the highest levels of minimum protection for workers and non-workers alike with labour market outcomes that on various dimensions are also among the best in the industrialised world. The Netherlands and Denmark enjoy among the highest employment rates in Europe and the lowest (long-term) unemployment rates. Elaborate active labour market policies, specifically activation efforts directed at social assistance recipients, coupled with intensive monitoring and non-compliance sanctioning, appear to play a key role here. But it appears that the strength of overall labour demand is a key contextual THE WELFARE STATE AND ANTI-POVERTY POLICY IN RICH COUNTRIES 33

4 Distribution of Income and Wealth 53 54 Indicator 4.1 Income per capita in the EU Indicator defined National income (GDP) in per capita (per head of population) terms expressed in Euro and adjusted for

Gini Coefficient The Gini Coefficient is a measure of income inequality which is based on data relating to household s disposable income. A Gini Coefficient of zero indicates perfect income equality, whereas

The paradox of redistribution revisited, or why targeting may matter less than we thought Ive Marx, Lina Salanauskaite and Gerlinde Verbist 8 March 2013 Claim We aim to show that Korpi and Palme s highly

EUROPEAN SEMESTER THEMATIC FICHE UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFITS WITH A FOCUS ON MAKING WORK PAY Thematic fiches are supporting background documents prepared by the services of the Commission in the context of the

Working paper 17 25 November 2013 UNITED NATIONS ECONOMIC COMMISSION FOR EUROPE CONFERENCE OF EUROPEAN STATISTICIANS Seminar "The way forward in poverty measurement" 2-4 December 2013, Geneva, Switzerland

Eurobarometer Monitoring the social impact of the crisis: public perceptions in the European Union (wave 6) REPORT Fieldwork: December 2011 Publication: April 2012 This survey has been requested by Directorate-General

168/2014-4 November 2014 At risk of poverty or social exclusion in the EU28 More than 120 million persons at risk of poverty or social exclusion in 2013 Almost 1 out of every 4 persons in the EU in this

Research note 9/2013 SOCIAL SITUATION OBSERVATORY INCOME DISTRIBUTION AND LIVING CONDITIONS APPLICA (BE), EUROPEAN CENTRE FOR THE EUROPEAN CENTRE FOR SOCIAL WELFARE POLICY AND RESEARCH (AT), ISER UNIVERSITY

The redistributive effect and progressivity of taxes revisited An international comparison across the EU with EUROMOD Gerlinde Verbist University of Antwerp, Centre for Social Policy Francesco Figari University

Flexicurity U. Michael Bergman University of Copenhagen Plan for the day What is flexicurity? Why is there an interest in the flexicurity model? Why are people unemployed? The Danish flexicurity system

Marriage rates Definitions and methodology SF3.1: Marriage and divorce rates The crude marriage rate is the number of marriages formed each year as a ratio to 1 000 people. This measure disregards other

Finland must take a leap towards new innovations Innovation Policy Guidelines up to 2015 Summary Finland must take a leap towards new innovations Innovation Policy Guidelines up to 2015 Summary 3 Foreword

Definitions and methodology CO1.2: at birth at birth is the average number of years a newborn can expect to live if he or she experienced the age-specific mortality rates prevalent in a particular year.

75/2015-27 April 2015 Labour Force Survey 2014 Almost 10 million part-time workers in the EU would have preferred to work more Two-thirds were women Among the 44.1 million persons in the European Union

Statistical Data on Women Entrepreneurs in Europe September 2014 Enterprise and Industry EUROPEAN COMMISSION Directorate-General for Enterprise and Industry Directorate D SMEs and Entrepreneurship Unit

MAPPING THE IMPLEMENTATION OF POLICY FOR INCLUSIVE EDUCATION MAPPING THE IMPLEMENTATION OF POLICY FOR INCLUSIVE EDUCATION (MIPIE) An exploration of challenges and opportunities for developing indicators

www.pwc.co.uk International Women's Day Women in Work Index Women in Work Index UK rises four places to 14 th position within the OECD, returning to its position in 2000. The third annual update of the

Dualization and crisis David Rueda The economic crises of the 20 th Century (from the Great Depression to the recessions of the 1970s) were met with significant increases in compensation and protection

PORTABILITY OF SOCIAL SECURITY AND HEALTH CARE BENEFITS IN ITALY Johanna Avato Human Development Network Social Protection and Labor The World Bank Background study March 2008 The Italian Social Security

Foundation Findings Social situation of young people in Europe 3rd EQLS policy brief When citing this report, please use the following wording: Eurofound (2014), Social situation of young people in Europe,

The U.S Health Care Paradox: How Spending More is Getting Us Less Elizabeth H. Bradley Yale School of Public Health Lauren A. Taylor Harvard Divinity School 1 The paradox Then there's the problem of rising

Social Citizenship Rights and Gender/Family Policies Walter Korpi Swedish Institute for Social Research The Logic of Industrialism Industrialism and Industrial Man. A Study of Labor Problems in Economic

EN Safety and health at work is everyone s concern. It s good for you. It s good for business. Analysis of the determinants of workplace occupational safety and health practice in a selection of EU Member

STUDY Policy Department Economic and Scientific Policy THE ROLE OF MINIMUM INCOME FOR SOCIAL INCLUSION IN THE EUROPEAN UNION (IP/A/EMPL/FWC/2006-05/SC2) IP/A/EMPL/ST/2007-01 JANUARY 2004 PE 401.013 This

UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre Report Card 9 The children left behind A league table of inequality in child well-being in the world s rich countries Innocenti Report Card 9 was written by Peter Adamson.

Regional characteristics of foreignborn people living in the United Kingdom By Alice Reid and Caroline Miller, Office for National Statistics Abstract This article examines the characteristics of foreign-born

Monitoring the evolution of income poverty and real incomes over time A B Atkinson, Anne-Catherine Guio and Eric Marlier Contents Introduction... 1 1. The headline indicators of income poverty and income

Expenditure and Outputs in the Irish Health System: A Cross Country Comparison Paul Redmond Overview This document analyzes expenditure and outputs in the Irish health system and compares Ireland to other

Indicator What Proportion of National Wealth Is Spent on Education? In 2008, OECD countries spent 6.1% of their collective GDP on al institutions and this proportion exceeds 7.0% in Chile, Denmark, Iceland,

FISCAL FACT July 2015 No. 475 A Comparison of the Tax Burden on Labor in the OECD By Sam Jordan & Kyle Pomerleau Research Assistant Economist Key Findings Average wage earners in the United States face

Flash Eurobarometer INNOVATION IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR: ITS PERCEPTION IN AND IMPACT ON BUSINESS REPORT Fieldwork: February-March 22 Publication: June 22 This survey has been requested by the European Commission,

Chapter Three Transfer Issues and Directions for Reform: Australian Transfer Policy in Comparative Perspective Peter Whiteford * 3.0 Introduction The redistribution of income through taxes, transfers and

Annual report 2009: the state of the drugs problem in Europe International Conference: New trends in drug use: facts and solutions, Parliament of the Republic of Vilnius - 5 November 2009 Dagmar Hedrich

Consumer Credit Worldwide at year end 2012 Introduction For the fifth consecutive year, Crédit Agricole Consumer Finance has published the Consumer Credit Overview, its yearly report on the international

This document was produced by UK NARIC for the National College for Teaching and Leadership (NCTL) 1. Introduction The current allocation of bursaries for postgraduate teacher training places in England

Early Childhood Education and Care Participation in education by three- and four-year-olds tends now to be high, though coverage is a third or less of the age group in several OECD countries. Early childhood

FISCAL FACT Jun. 2014 No. 434 A Comparison of the Tax Burden on Labor in the OECD By Kyle Pomerleau Economist Key Findings Average wage earners in the United States face two major taxes: the individual

Indicator On What Resources and Services Is Education Funding Spent? In primary, secondary and post-secondary non-tertiary education combined, current accounts for an average of 92% of total spending in

COUNTRY NOTE Education at a Glance: OECD Indicators 2012 EUROPEAN UNION Under embargo until 11 September 2012, at 11:00 am Paris time Questions can be directed to: Andreas Schleicher, Advisor to the Secretary-General

Education at a Glance 2008 NO MEDIA OR WIRE TRANSMISSION BEFORE 9 SEPTEMBER 2008, 11:00 PARIS TIME OECD Technical Note For Spain Governments are paying increasing attention to international comparisons

Health Care a Public or Private Good? Keith Schenone December 09, 2012 Economics & Institutions MGMT 7730-SIK Thesis Health care should be treated as a public good because it is not an ordinary commodity

IMMIGRATION TO AND EMIGRATION FROM GERMANY IN THE LAST FEW YEARS Bernd Geiss* Germany, Destination for Migrants Germany is in the middle of Europe and has common borders with nine countries. Therefore,

Quality review of the OECD database on household incomes and poverty and the OECD earnings database Part I 20 December 2012 This report has been produced by the Directorate for Employment, Labour and Social

187/2014-5 December 2014 This News Release has been revised following an error in the data for Gross Fixed Capital Formation. This affects both the growth of GFCF and its contribution to GDP growth. All

European Centre Europäisches Zentrum Centre EuropÉen Orsolya Lelkes is Economic Policy Analyst at the European Centre for Social Welfare Policy and Research, http://www.euro.centre.org/lelkes Eszter Zólyomi

April 2012 Child Poverty in High- and Middle-Income Countries: Selected Findings from LIS 1 What is LIS? Janet C. Gornick, Director, LIS Professor of Political Science and Sociology, Graduate Center City

The redistributive effect of public and private social programmes: A cross-country empirical analysis Kees Goudswaard and Koen Caminada Leiden University, The Netherlands Abstract A function of many national

Annals of the University of Petroşani, Economics, 11(3), 2011, 15-22 15 THE EVOLUTION AND THE FUTURE ROLE OF THE BRANCH IN DISTRIBUTION OF THE BANKING PRODUCTS AND SERVICES CĂTĂLIN NICOLAE BULGĂREA * ABSTRACT:

From: Education at a Glance 2012 Highlights Access the complete publication at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/eag_highlights-2012-en How many students study abroad and where do they go? Please cite this chapter

by Ghazala Azmat, Maia Güell and Alan Manning Women looking for work Female unemployment rates differ widely from county to country. Ghazala Azmat, Maia Güell and Alan Manning look for the reasons that

No. 9 / July 2012 Is there a time for «Social Europe»? Looking beyond the Lisbon Strategy paradigm Jerôme Vignon and Bea Cantillon Is there a time for "Social Europe"? Looking beyond the Lisbon Strategy

(Cover page) The Tax Burden of Typical Workers in the EU 28 2014 Edition NEW DIRECTION Page 1 of 17 James Rogers & Cécile Philippe May 2014 New Direction aims to help shift the EU onto a different course

Why invest in employment? A study on the cost of unemployment Final report On behalf of: European Federation for Services to Individuals (EFSI) Maarten Gerard Daphné Valsamis Wim Van der Beken With the

Analysis from the CPMR Secretariat July 2015 What do the recent regional GDP statistics tell us about Cohesion? Headline messages - Recent regional GDP statistics reveal that regional disparities are on

PRESS KIT Pan-European opinion poll on occupational safety and health Results across 36 European countries Press kit Conducted by Ipsos MORI Social Research Institute at the request of the European Agency

2 OECD RECOMMENDATION OF THE COUNCIL ON THE PROTECTION OF CRITICAL INFORMATION INFRASTRUCTURES ORGANISATION FOR ECONOMIC CO-OPERATION AND DEVELOPMENT The OECD is a unique forum where the governments of

92/2015-27 May 2015 Energy prices in the EU Household electricity prices in the EU rose by 2.9% in 2014 Gas prices up by 2.0% in the EU In the European Union (EU), household electricity prices 1 rose by

Taxing Wages 2014 SPECIAL FEATURE: CHANGES IN STRUCTURAL LABOUR INCOME TAX PROGRESSIVITY OVER THE 2000-12 PERIOD IN OECD MEMBER COUNTRIES This work is published on the responsibility of the Secretary-General

?? Directorate-General for Communication PUBLIC OPINION MONITORING UNIT 2014 EUROPEAN ELECTIONS DESK RESEARCH Brussels, April 2015 Profile of voters and abstainees in the European elections 2014 INTRODUCTION...